18-year-old shot and killed in Bywater neighborhood of Annapolis

An 18-year-old man was shot and killed Friday afternoon in the 1900 block of Copeland Street in Annapolis, according to the Annapolis Police Department.

Police confirmed the man’s identity as Tre’on Makeiu Hunt, 18, of Glen Burnie.

The shooting happened in the same block of the Bywater neighborhood where, on July 27, another fatal shooting occurred. Robert Clark, 16, was killed, and a 17-year-old wounded in the Bywater Mutual Homes neighborhood, a development of townhouses for low- and middle-income families, four miles and a world away from the city’s well-known docks and yachts.

During a news conference Friday afternoon a few steps from the spot where Hunt was killed, Annapolis Police Chief Ed Jackson urged members of the community to come forward and help police make an arrest.

“What we need is for the neighbors to come forward. It’s their responsibility, too,” he said, standing in front of Mayor Gavin Buckley and others.

Jackson said officers have been in the Bywater neighborhood all summer after an increase in violent crime this year, hoping to ward off more shootings and deaths. The department has added patrols and community outreach. He declined to speculate on a motive in the shooting, or whether it was related to the death of Clark just around the corner.

Immediately after the briefing, the chief, mayor and Alderwoman Sheila Finlayson, who represents the area, walked across the Boys and Girls Club activity center parking lot to the home of Hunt’s mother.

Members of the family said Hunt grew up in the neighborhood and attended Annapolis High School but had moved out. He was back in Annapolis for a job interview at the Naval Academy.

”He got the job. He was going to start on Monday,” said Jyenell Turner, his aunt. A spokesperson for the academy could not be reached to confirm Hunt’s job status.

She was sitting on a bus stop and watched the news conference with Hunt’s grandfather, Eric Hunt. While Turner doesn’t live in the neighborhood, Hunt lives just across the street from the spot where his grandson died.

”There is a shooting every day in Annapolis. Every day,” he said. He blamed increased gun violence on rivalries between young men and teenagers who live in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, known as “Twenty,” Annapolis Gardens, Robinwood and “in town.”

Bywater is a collection of two-story brick townhouses, with 12 units in a single building. Tre’on Hunt was shot between two of the buildings, and his body was found in what served as a backyard for some of the homes.

There has been a history of drug dealing in the community, but in Annapolis that tends to bounce between neighborhoods as police step up their presence. A group of neighbors sitting outside as the hot day began to cool said they couldn’t remember the last time drugs were a factor on their streets.

Turner said the Boys and Girls Club next to the shooting scene offers programs for younger teens, but nothing as the neighborhood children grow older. She said there’s usually nothing for those teenagers to do but get in trouble.

”You get out of school, and you start planning something,” she said.

Eric Hunt said while individual disputes might involve jealously over a girlfriend, or some other issue, it had more to do with the availability of handguns and “youth power.” ”It’s all young men,” he said. “It’s always about the neighborhoods.”

Police have not made any arrests in Friday’s shooting, which happened as a nearby elementary school was letting out. School buses were stopped several blocks short of the scene of the shooting. Police directed parents to pick up their children at the corner of Bywater Road and Copeland Street.

Bywater was not among the neighborhoods selected as a possible site to test a violence prevention program called Cure Violence, led by the city and the Anne Arundel County Department of Health. The $700,000 initiative is set to begin by the end of this year.

As a precaution, the city canceled its “Teen Night Celebration,” planned for Friday night at the Pip Moyer Recreation Center.

rick.hutzell@thebaltimorebanner.com

hugo.kugiya@thebaltimorebanner.com

This story has been updated with the correct spellings of Sheila Finlayson’s and Jyenell Turner’s first names.

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